1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus which exposes an image on a photosensitive material and superposes the photosensitive material and an image-receiving material and effects heat development transfer so as to obtain an image on the image-receiving material, and to an application device used in the image recording apparatus and applying a solvent for image formation onto the photosensitive material to obtain an image on the photosensitive material.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exist image recording apparatuses which expose a photosensitive material, apply a solvent for image formation to the exposed photosensitive material, superpose an image-receiving material on the photosensitive material to which the solvent has been applied so that heat development transfer is carried out, so as to obtain an image on the image-receiving material. In this type of conventional image recording apparatus, exposure, application and heat development transfer have conventionally been carried out on respectively different stages. More specifically, the photosensitive material is exposed at an exposure stage. Thereafter, the photosensitive material is conveyed and application is carried out at an application stage which is separate from the exposure stage. Thereafter, the photosensitive material is again conveyed, an image-receiving material is superposed thereon, and heat development transfer is carried out at a transfer stage which is separate from the exposure stage and the application stage.
Effecting exposure, application and heat development transfer at respectively separate stages leads to the apparatus becoming larger on the whole. Further, although there are conventional apparatuses in which an image of a document on a document stand is directly exposed onto the photosensitive material, the implementation of an image recording apparatus in which the image is once read by a memory or the like and digitally exposed is desirable.
Further, in conventional image recording apparatuses such as those described above, the photosensitive material image-exposed in the exposure section is exposed with the ambient temperature at an ordinary temperature. However, the characteristics, color density and color balance of a photosensitive material change easily due to variations in the temperature at the time of exposure. As a result, variations in the ambient temperature at the time of exposure are an obstacle to obtaining stable images of high image quality. In particular, in order to make the image recording apparatus more compact on the whole, the heat development transfer section must be disposed in a vicinity of the exposure section. The variations in temperature of the heat development transfer section affect the exposure section, and countermeasures are needed to overcome this drawback.
There exist image recording apparatuses which expose the image of a document onto a photosensitive material, superpose an image-receiving material onto the photosensitive material after exposure, and effect heat development transfer so as to obtain an image on the image-receiving material. Here, when heat development transfer is carried out with the photosensitive material and the image-receiving material affixed together and entrained about a drum, while the drum rotates, the photosensitive material is peeled from the drum by utilizing a pawl, and the image-receiving material is peeled from the photosensitive material by utilizing a pawl different from the aforementioned pawl. Pawls are thereby needed, and need for two types of pawls results in a lack of stability in peeling.